مجله منظر
پیاپی 49 (زمستان 1398)

In Baluchestan Region, the city of Nimruz is situated on a meridian. Iranian people believe that the meridian stands at the center of the mainland between China and Western Europe. That might explain why it is called Nimruz. Nimruz refers to the point of time at which the city falls on the middle of the earth during the interval between the sunrise and the sunset. In fact, this is the name of part of the earth which is facing the sky. This area would have been selected as the meridian and the world clock or Greenwich to have more accurate nominal divisions corresponding to the relational real world. Similar cases of this relationship between the sky and the earth can be found in Iranian civilization for instance in names of people, Mahvash and Khurvash or in the name of places Nimruz, Bakhtaran and Khavarān, on occasions, June and September, and in different events such as Yalda and Nowruz.
The spatial bonds between the earth and the sky are so strong in Iranian culture that the separation of sky and its elements from this culture seems impossible. Yalda is the longest night of the year and the birthdate of Mithra who bestows her blessing and benefaction to mankind. The sun is the symbol of blessing and growth and it is born at Yalda. The appellation of the times and places based on the sun-related events indicate the value and outstanding nature of some of the times with respect to others.
The selection of the special days and places construct Iranian specific landscapes. The suffix “Gāh” which is used for place and time somehow reflects the resemblance of the nature of time and place in the Iranian myths. The terms Meidāngāh [plaza] and Sobhgāh [morning] stand for place and time respectively. Time and place are recognized by the earth’s displacement with respect to the sun. The use of the suffix “Gāh” for the earth and the sky might be a proof showing the inherent unity between the time and place as two basic elements known to man. Therefore, Iranian culture and the events and names related to time and the sky can better reflect Iran’s unique landscape. The map on the cover of this issue illustrates the forefathers’ imagination of the earth’s old lands and Nimruz meridian.

The layout and plan of a garden represent an important part of its characteristics.The Study of the existing gardens or garden documents is among the main ways to recognizethe different types of gardens. However, many gardens have been demolished and therefore, inthe absence of the mentioned examples, the historical and literary texts could make it possibleto study them. In this regard, the current study aims to rediscover the image of the garden that'Attar has implicitly described while narrating Rabe'a story. Therefore, the current study seeksto answer these questions: How is the general layout of bāgh-i Hāreth? and based on the poet’sdescriptions, which of the elements is included in this garden? The article seeks to answerthese questions through the interpretation of the poem’s text and the study on the retrievedimage. In this regard, the mentioned image will be compared with other gardens’ images andlayouts. The result of this study shows that bāgh-i Hāreth consists of two sections, and thesetwo sections are connected through the garden’s entrance edifice. While the garden has anexterior and public area located opposite the edifice of Tāq, it also includes a private gardenwith a pavilion, an avenue, and a pool. The investigations show that this private garden hasprobably had a longitudinal spatial structure, which is similar to the garden described by AbuNasr Heravi in the later centuries.

Today, drylands account for one third of the earth grounds. The international nature conservation union defines the drylands as the regions with water shortage that might have limited precipitation or rainfalls for a short period of time. According to the climatic conditions and the daily increasing interventions of human beings in the ecosystems; and, considering the unbridled expansion of the cities, aridity and desertification and the grounds of its emergence, i.e. dry and arid lands, and the way the human beings treat it has become a hot topic of the day and a major concern of the landscape architects and theoreticians and environment supporters. However, the thing that has been so far carried out is the interpretation and evaluation of these grounds within the framework of a solely climatic and occasionally ecologic subject wherein the role of the human beings as the addressee influencing and influenced by it has been ignored or underestimated. The present study uses a qualitative method based on logical reasoning through library research to review the related literature on the subject within the area of the landscape perception process and seeks to offer a landscape-based mindset and showcase the objective-subjective potentials of the dry grounds within the format of arid landscapes. To do so, use has been made herein of an objective theory within the format of “visual lands” and a subjective theory within the framework of the ideations by Jacobs (2006) in order to reach answers for the study questions due to the fact that there are specified and codified indices available for evaluating landscape. The evaluation and analysis of the visual and mental indices of the drylands in these two formats is reflective of the idea that there is compatibility with the intended indices in the evaluation of the physical and biological indicators of the dry grounds, including morphology, vegetative cover, texture and color, and that these natural grounds can be realized as transcending beyond the solely climatic and environmental framework and grant them a landscape identity.

Tourism and gastronomy together are as old as tourism and gastronomy. Nowadays the systems of these twins are so developed that they can secure social and economic prosperity and well-being of societies and control environmental hazards by focusing on creativity, local and indigenous art and culture. Such sustainable development depends on innovation and the adoption of innovative approaches in solving civil problems. Although the street food seems to be only a place for slow and strolling tourism at first glance, if the managers and urban planners can support and reinforce the creative and related industries in the creative tourist paradigm, one can hope that the larger local community will find better livability and better prosperity.In this study, for answering the main question, “what kind of activities should be done on the sidewalks of 30 Tir street in Tehran to be sustainable as a creative gastronomy tourism?”, a qualitative research method is used and by conducting library studies, observing, interviewing and holding the expert panel, performing 77 activities is represented as a response. These activities are in fact the expected services of business ecosystem based on creative gastronomy tourism, only 7 of them are currently running on 30 Tir street in Tehran, and the rest are the road map development of this pedestrian street, which are considered as the main findings of this research. Among the priorities of this roadmap, being in harmony with the historical and cultural textures of the neighborhood and relation with it was associated with the consensus of the expert panels.

In recent decades, environmental crisis has been regarded as the most critical humans’ concerns. Besides, sustainable development as a holistic approach plays a noticeable role in meeting the challenges and problems raised by this crisis. One of the most practical methods to develop the concepts of sustainable development is teaching these concepts to various people of the societies. Meanwhile, education especially in elementary school, considered as the most basic education levels in every societies, is one of most important objectives of fostering future generations for living in the society. This paper aims to propose an ecological pattern of education for sustainable development through elementary school ground by applying the research method based on documentary studies, reviewing the sources, and their analysis. The assumption is that the school ground especially in terms of designing based on sustainable development principals, can act as a 3D book. It is also assumed that school ground has the potentiality to teach the concepts of sustainability to the students and people involved in the school. Accordingly, a model is presented for school ground based on the three principals of sustainable design including economy of resources, life cycle, and humanistic design. The outcomes show that designing school ground based on these principals can extensively teach the concepts of sustainable development to students and other individuals in school.

As the nation's largest mass housing project of the country, the Mehr Housing Project was initiated using the experience of the mass housing in the Western countries after World War II through modeling cheap and fast-building projects to provide housing for the poor and the middle class in large volumes. This massive volume of buildings at large scale gave rise to emerging urban textures that, despite their physical distinctions, had many similarities in their semantic and spatial dimensions. These new urban textures emerged mainly from the physical conception of the concept of housing and limiting its concept to shelter. As a result, ignoring the social life of the residents as the primary users of space rendered housing lack any sociophysical interaction and coexistence and itself began to cause a great deal of damage. This study aimed to provide a solution for overcoming the current situation through examining the pathological aspects of Mehr Housing Project and its long experience over a decade and conforming it to the study sample from the perspective of landscape knowledge and its practical measures. A life that tries to promote environmental, social issues through providing the appropriate context for optimal and maximum interaction and reliance on it from the view of landscape knowledge and paying attention to putting on the agenda a quality called urban landscape. This is achieved through taking into account the principle of diversity-plurality in order to reinforce the social spirit of the place and to create spaces for strengthening human communication with the environment and to break the created rigid and uniform structures. This study seeks to answer the question of how to learn from Mehr Housing Project’s ten years of housing experience and what is behind the architecture of this project, focusing on formulating landscape solutions as one of the main options ahead to get out of the current situation and benefit from creating conditions of favorable macro-social housing? An approach that is focused on its conceptual model to address all aspects of the pathological dimensions based on holism.

History shows that ‘landscape’, a particular version of cosmophany (the appearance of the world proper to a certain being), for a long time has been the privilege of an elite. In the present world, it has become a notion common to a good part of Humankind. A philosopher like Giorgio Agamben qualifies it as “a phenomenon which concerns Man in an essential way”, and goes as far as to suppose that it stretches out to the animal kingdom. One tries here to set a few historical and ontological bench marks in this popular soup.